Janet Hargreaves

Risk: the ethics of a creative curriculum

Higher education in the UK espouses to develop intelligence and critical skills in undergraduates. To do this requires exposing students to challenge and thus risk. However, current models of quality assurance are risk‐averse and thus potentially limit the scope of creative learning and teaching strategies. Using two case studies, this paper argues for a utilitarian risk‐management model that can accommodate creative learning and teaching strategies, while making sensible decisions about risk management

The preparation and practice of disabled health care practitioners: exploring the issues

Regulatory bodies governing health professions and professional education set clear expectations regarding fitness to practise. Within the UK, the Equality Act, 2010, poses a challenge to regulators, educators and employers to ensure that people are not excluded on the basis of disability and to facilitate inclusion. This research took a mixed methods approach to exploring the tensions between Higher Education providers and placement providers in the health sector. Disabled and nondisabled students and health professionals engaged in semi-structured interviews and a survey in order to explore their beliefs and experiences. The findings suggest that applying equality legislation within health settings may be particularly difficult and that ‘disability’ is an ambiguous and multifaceted concept. Whilst small in scale, the findings have given a voice to a professional group who are underrepresented in research and have raised a number of important issues that merit discussion and further scrutiny.

Aesthetic, Emotion and Empathetic Imagination: Beyond Innovation to Creativity in the Health and Social Care Workforce

The Creativity in Health and Care Workshops programme was a series of investigative workshops aimed at interrogating the subject of creativity with an over-arching objective of extending the understanding of the problems and possibilities of applying creativity within the health and care sector workforce. Included in the workshops was a concept analysis, which attempted to gain clearer understanding of creativity and innovation within this context. The analysis led to emergent theory regarding the central importance of aesthetics, emotion and empathetic imagination to the generation of creative and innovative outcomes that have the capacity to promote wellbeing in the health and social care workforce. Drawing on expertise in the field, this paper outlines the concept analysis and subsequent reflection.

Preparing disabled students for professional practice: managing risk through a principles‐based approach

AIM A discussion exploring the ways disabled students are managed in practice settings. It proposes and argues for morally and legally viable principles to guide risk assessment and inclusive decision-making in practice. BACKGROUND Equality law means that universities are bound not to discriminate against students on the basis, amongst other things, of disability. As a consequence in the UK, there is a perceived increase in numbers of disabled people applying for and succeeding as health professionals. Whilst placement providers are equally obliged by the law to have inclusive policies, competing needs including patient safety, public confidence and professional regulations mean that adjustments that can be made in an educational environment to appropriately support student learning may prove to be more difficult in placements that provide direct care to the public. DATA SOURCES This discussion is an outcome of recommendations from published research by the authors and their research partners. It is supported by related literature, critical debate amongst academics, disabled students and disabled and non-disabled practitioners. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Ensuring a nursing workforce that mirrors the diversity of the population it serves is of universal importance. Effective management of disabled students can contribute to achieving this goal and to promoting a positive view of disabled practitioners. CONCLUSION Legislation is necessary to protect disabled people from discrimination. To respect this legislation, when preparing nurses and other health professions, a clear understanding of the law and a principles-based approach to guiding risk is important.

Story in Health and Social Care

This paper offers a brief consideration of how narrative, in the form of people’s own stories, potentially figures in health and social care provision as part of the impulse towards patient-centred care. The rise of the epistemological legitimacy of patients’ stories is sketched here. The paper draws upon relevant literature and original writing to consider the ways in which stories can mislead as well as illuminate the process of making individual treatment care plans.

Creatively employing funding to support innovation

Innovations within higher education are often prompted through the capture of supportive funding. One of the largest examples of this arose from the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) initiative in England (2005–2010). Drawing on the experience of two such Centres, this paper analyses some of the consequences of that funding. It will explore and evidence the fact that whilst funding may incentivise innovation, there is not a simple cause and effect relationship. It will suggest that by offering flexibility in funding approaches, innovation can be encouraged and it will propose that through the direct engagement of students, a powerful and cost-effective force can be empowered to drive curriculum change.

Evaluating service user pedagogy in UK higher education: Validating the Huddersfield Service User Pedagogy Scale

BACKGROUND There is global recognition that the inclusion of service users in the education of health and social care students in higher education can lead to more compassionate professional identities which will enable better decision making. However, to date there is no systematic tool to explore learning and service user involvement in the curriculum. OBJECTIVES To generate and validate a psychometric instrument which will allow educators to evaluate service user pedagogy. DESIGN Construction and validation of a new scale. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTINGS 365 undergraduate students from health and social care departments in two universities. RESULTS A two correlated factor scale. Factor 1 - perceived presence of service users in the taught curriculum and factor 2 - professionals and service users working together (correlation between factor 1 and factor 2 - r = 0.32). CONCLUSIONS The Huddersfield Service User Pedagogy Scale provides a valid instrument for educators to evaluate student learning. In addition, the tool can contribute to student reflections on their shifting professional identities as they progress through their studies.